The Three Stages of Alzheimer's Disease

One of the most common forms of dementia, Alzheimer's disease stages progress towards the death of the patient. This degenerative, debilitating neurological disorder is thus far incurable.

Affecting the lives of anyone who encounters the patient, the effects of the disease can be draining for the caregiver as well as the patient. Three Alzheimer's disease stages are generally agreed to exist, though some break these three down into substages.

Forgetting names, including those belonging to people and things are commonly seen in the early stage of this disorder - and this is when most patients are diagnosed. The first thing to go, studies have shown, is the memory of smells. These memory lapses increase in frequency along with the progression of the disease.

In the early stage, the patient is often aware of his or her symptoms, but will often be in denial and try to find ways to cover for their memory losses. This can lead to stress as they may be angry with themselves for these lapses. It can also be because they know and fear what awaits them, for which surely they cannot be blamed.

In the early Alzheimer's disease stage, the patient will have memory lapses though while not insignificant, do not yet prevent them from going about their daily life. The early Alzheimer's disease stage can last quite some time, even years.

Upon arriving at the middle stage of the disease, the patient will have some noticeable memory and cognitive problems, as well as personality changes. The afflicted person will often repeat questions, lose things, be disoriented and have ever more common disruptions in their mental faculties. They will experience a loss of their ability to understand or respond to language, both written and verbal. Anger often crops up during this stage, and the frustration of the sufferer is understandable in this Alzheimer's disease stage.

Behavior changes are seen frequently in this stage of Alzheimer's disease, and there will be a sharp drop in their ability to take care of themselves - they will begin to need help taking care of daily tasks like bathing and eating.

The last Alzheimer's disease stage is characterized by a near complete loss of the ability to function mentally and physically. The patient is essentially unrecognizable as the person they were before the disease took hold of them due to the extensive brain damage which has occurred by this time.

Care is needed nearly around the clock in this final Alzheimer's disease stage, which leads to the caregiver being utterly exhausted. Once reaching this stage, the majority of patients will be receiving care from professionals at a hospital or hospice. This is a difficult decision to be made by the patient's loved ones. but continuing home care will not change the progress of the disease, and will almost certainly have a deleterious effect on the caregiver at this point.

Each Alzheimer's disease stage has several substages, but the prognosis in Alzheimer's, sadly is always the same. Living one day at a time is often the smartest strategy for caregivers to cope with the heavy burden of caring for a patient through the progression of Alzheimer's disease stages.